Wednesday, 23 March 2016

#46: Tower Of Destruction

TOWER OF DESTRUCTION

Keith Martin

Reviewed by Mark Lain

Picture this:
YOU have been to market all day in Zengis and, on returning to your village, YOU
find that it has been devastated by a huge flying sphere that rains fire down
on everything that it passes over. Being the only villager left alive YOU
decide that you are going to pursue the pesky sphere and make it answer for its
crimes. On catching up with the sphere and climbing aboard it becomes apparent
that it is in fact being piloted by an evil wizard (or rather the illusion of
him) in the employ of a Demon called Relem that, surprise surprise, wants to
wipe out all of Titan (starting with Allansia) by going around in a big flying
tower and blowing it all up. So you head off to an Ice Palace populated by the
spirits of the long-extinct Ice Elf race to acquire a bunch of useful stuff to
help you combat said Demon in his tower, followed by finding the tower itself,
killing the wizard and the Demon and then destroying the tower so Titan can
survive the threat of yet another homicidal maniac. Thus is the essence of the
plot of number 46 in the Puffin series. Now, let’s just go back over that and
see if it really makes any sense at all for a moment, shall we: 1) your village
is wiped out by a flying sphere that torches everywhere it goes – that I can
live with as it’s the start of the book and does create intrigue from the
outset; 2) the ancient Ice Palace – yes, that’s fine too, this is fantasy after
all; 3) a flying tower being used by a Demon to destroy the world – oh dear,
it’s just got ridiculous: why would a Demon who presumably has no end of
potential powers at his disposal build a vertical stone bomber and spend ages
flying about blowing the world up one small stage at a time... and what the
hell is a flying tower anyway?

Therein lies
one of the problems with this book: if you try to rationalise or spend more
than a few seconds thinking about the plot, it just becomes so far-fetched that
it is genuinely ludicrous. However, curiously, this does not detract too much
from the actual experience of playing this adventure as the plot is quite epic
in its scope and its good points are so very thoroughly developed that, only
occasionally, do you stop and think that the flying tower idea might be a bit
silly. A lot has gone into making the key stages seem very real and believable
and the combined atmosphere of snowy wasteland and almost supernatural fantasy
is enough to carry this one through. Indeed, the final showdown in the tower is
mercifully brief, leaving you to focus much more on the earlier stages and this
book is effectively in three parts: a trek across the icy wastes in pursuit of
the sphere, followed by the exploration of the Ice Palace, and finally the big
pay-off with the Demon in the tower itself. Rather annoyingly, though, the plot
is presented with such extreme linearity that you basically cannot diverge away
from KM’s intended route at all and this isn’t Ian Livingstone-style linearity
in the sense that there is a true path that needs to be found, this is a
literal “you will follow this route and you will not be given any options to go
anywhere other than this route” approach. The only real scope for digression is
in the sense of which cameos you get involved in but even these will always
return you to the linear path and they hardly constitute much of a “choice” as
such as they are literally just side-steps along the same path. In fact, KM is
so determined that you will only use his route that there are very often cases
where, should you diverge slightly, once you return to the defined path’s
linking section again, the paragraphs will read very awkwardly as if the book
assumes you will only ever follow the exact correct routing. This is proved by
the fact that, should you then read that particular part in the “definitive”
routing, it will make perfect sense and read seamlessly as you go from
paragraph to paragraph. Another slightly jarring aspect is that, when you enter
the sphere and discover what the real menace is, the book seems to think that
the tower’s existence is some sort of secret... er, what’s the title again,
Keith?

So, obviously
there are some logic issues with how this has been designed and anyone who is
familiar with KM’s FFs will not be surprised to learn that many of the
Martin-isms that both enhance and seriously mar his books are very evident
here:

Maths
cheat-proofing – KM loves to hide secret sections behind maths puzzles and this
book is no exception with umpteen names to render into numbers

Free-roaming
– KM generally favours a RPG-style approach where you use central points from
which to freely explore a key area in any order you wish, in this case, the Ice
Palace

Insanely
hard puzzles to crack – linked to the maths cheat-proofing, two puzzles in
particular (involving clock faces and musical notes) are practically impossible
to fathom out, especially as the clock puzzle has a visual error in it and the
music tablature puzzle requires knowledge of, well, music tablature!

The
book is plagued by errors – this one is well-known for having more than its
fair share of errors, with mis-linking sections, illogically-linking sections,
typos, mis-calculations in KM’s own maths (er, that makes the puzzles even
harder, right) and some paragraphs that simply make no sense at all (see below)

You
are forced, in the first section at least, to eat (or suffer a -2 St penalty)
frequently which exhausts your Provisions pretty quickly and gets very
repetitive

Magic
– KM likes to briefly endow the player with magic late on which is almost
always unnecessary to victory and just throws more stuff in for you to try to
think about as you play

Time
tracking – you are required (again, in the first section only) to keep track of
how many days it takes you to reach the sphere. This might seem key to your
success but, in fact, it hardly makes any difference at all how long you take
and just makes a couple of encounters slightly tougher if you have taken a bit
longer to get there, so this is, as always with KM’s time trackers, completely
pointless and not worth worrying about

Honour
– KM likes the concept of being honourable and, especially as you need to get
the Elves on your side, Honour does play a major role and can easily be the
difference between winning and losing. Kill in cold blood or plunder graves and
your Honour (which starts at 6) will decrease, do good deeds and it rises

Magic
swords – KM loves magic swords, you always need magic swords in his FFs, and
there are magic swords galore in this one

This list of
factors that are fundamental to how this book works might suggest that it is
heavily weighted against you but, in fact, this book is very well balanced and
actually very fair to play. There is enough challenge here to make it
satisfying, but at no point do you feel that you are fighting a losing battle.
However, what is absolutely essential to state at this point is that a
character with a Skill lower than 11 has no hope and an above average Skill is
essential to victory due to several tough combats (with a lot of adjusters) and
umpteen Skill tests. This might seem harsh but there are many opportunities to
increase your Skill (both in combat terms and increasing your Initial value
too) and it is possible to face Relem with a Skill as high as 16 if you have
all the pre-requisite demon-fighting gear and drink the akavit just before the
fight. Relem is not to be taken lightly (he has Sk 14 St 25) but the ice sword
will do him -3 St damage on each hit and should you drink the Potion of Speed
before the fight you get two attacks in each of the first three Attack Rounds,
so this fight can be much less un-winnable than it might initially appear to
be. You also have his wizard minion to contend with but this should not pose
any problem as long as you know his weakness for cold and attack him with the
Wand of Cold (which incidentally always does 5 St damage in general combats) which
shaves 8 Stamina points off him instantly. The Provision-sapping first section
could leave you with no outlet to restore Stamina, but there are loads of
opportunities to acquire more food along the way and, although you are limited
to only being able to carry 10 portions of Provisions, if you collect Elven
food it does not count as encumbrance so you can carry loads of Provisions
potentially which is very helpful in keeping you alive. Equally, if your Honour
is high enough you can have your Stamina boosted to 25 and there are a few
Strength potions kicking around as well. The only really tough part of this
book is the Ice Palace episode which must be negotiated in a specific order.
Although you have the illusion of choice in that all nine sections can be
theoretically explored in any order, there is an optimum order and it can only
really be found by trial and error. If you do not explore this part in the
correct order you will never find the plethora of essential items that are
hidden there and you will have no chance later on in the book as some parts of
the palace directly grant you access to other parts through unravelling the
puzzles hidden within. Obviously it is always possible to just blunder your way
through first time and get lucky, but this is probably not going to happen
really. Interestingly, a particularly fair inclusion is that instant death
sections are very rare (I can only find three) and you will only reach them by
doing really stupid things such as climbing into a fire or jumping out of the
bottom of the flying tower! There are even two non-win endings where you save
the world but die in the attempt which adds a lot of replay potential in a bid to
reach the ultimate ending.

One of the real
winning points that always features in KM’s FFs is the depth of imagination and
originality that he always tries to include whilst always sticking closely to
his central themes to really draw you in. The ice theme is well presented with
lots of atmosphere, locations, and encounters that all suit icy areas. If there
is a niggle with the laying on thick of the ice concept, it would be that KM
seems to be trying to set some sort of record for how many times he can get the
word “ice” into a book. In fact, no, he’s trying to set a record for getting it
into a paragraph... no, scrub that, into a SENTENCE, as many times as possible
and this will begin to grate after a while. That said, it is only fair to KM to
emphasise some good points and amongst some of my favourite touches in this
book are: a Potion of Fire Breath that allows YOU to breathe fire; the Ice
Palace episode and its associated extinct Ice Elf concepts including a stunning
ice mausoleum, helpful spirits as well as tormented ones that have gone nuts,
and considerable latent magic to exploit;credit is due for trying to create unusual puzzles with the musical
notes and the clock thing, tough as they are; and there are several creative
encounters including all the Ice Elf episodes, along with a talking Owl, many
types of Demon and Golem, lots of “ice” beasts, a Pegasus to ride on, and the
highly original and macabre Ice Gaunts.

It has to be
said at this point though that the Ice Palace is clearly the part that KM has
thrown the kitchen sink at and the whole book centres around this pivotal
section. This is where you find almost everything that you need to have to win
and this makes it feel so focussed on your collecting loads of items that it
seems rather like a manic shopping spree. In fact, there is so much item
grabbing and puzzle deciphering going on in the Ice Palace that, in spite of
its impressive and almost Sci-Fi-esque and dream-like feel, it derails the fast
pacing of the preceding sphere chase section and does make you grateful that
the final (tower) part is comparatively brief. At the end your character is
exhausted and so are you as the player as this is a long epic book that
involves navigating a large number of sections to beat it.

This book is
undeniably big on imagination and concept, but it also seems somehow odd and
disjointed in its execution, in part due to the arch-linearity of KM’s approach
here, but also due to its errors and inconsistencies. None of the errors are
critical problems (this is not in the same disastrous league as #58 Revenge of the Vampire), but they
are certainly very self-evident and can make this book seem rather messy:

There
are several mis-linked sections that lead quite simply to the wrong next
section. Surely this could have been avoided with closer play-testing?

Several
other sections link to sections that don’t quite seem to make sense, but this is
partially due to the “true path or nothing” way that this book is designed

If
you find an Ice Fox and take its pelt it will transform into a Silver Fox... or
rather the book will incorrectly refer to it as such when it comes to needing
it!

Certain
paragraphs simply make no sense at all as they will give you one instruction,
then instantly change it to something else further into the paragraph

Time
is handled in a very woolly way and the prompts to add 1 to your Time are vague
and generally only mentioned in passing rather than telling you what you have
to do... not that this makes any difference in the long-run, to be fair

The
essential Ice Bird and Book item is unfathomable if you try to think it out –
you are told they are “as one” yet they seem to work independently and it’s not
easy to visualise what the hell this item actually is!

As
with all KM books you are expected to pay very close attention to the text to
pick up on the numerical prompts and record all the various names you need to
know, but, whilst this does demand that you immerse yourself fully in the
material, it also means you cannot miss any of the bits that make no sense due
to them being errors in the text which will leave you fairly baffled (and maybe
a little frustrated as you try to figure out if you’ve missed the point
somewhere) at times

KM’s
well-designed and nicely executed worlds deserve art that does them justice
and, for the most part, Pete Knifton’s interior illustrations are suitably dark
and imposing. His Dark Elves work very well and his Ice Ghosts are especially
impressive. A very striking aspect of PK’s art is the way his Golems are drawn
with forced upwards perspective giving the impression of their enormity and
awe-inspiring size compared to you – this is a very successful technique. A
special mention needs to go to two images which are clearly throwbacks to
earlier FF illustrations which is a neat example of consistency in terms of
creatures’ physical appearance, as well as continuity within Allansian species –
the Fire Demon looks to be heavily influenced by Malcolm Barter’s version in FF
#3 The Forest of Doom whilst the Ice
Demon looks to be exactly the same one as that shown in #9 Caverns of the Snow Witch. Terry Oakes’ cover image is of an
event that never comes (hopefully, otherwise you’ve lost) as it depicts the
incomprehensible flying Black Tower concept fire-bombing a small village within
a frozen environment. The frozen part captures the essence of the book well,
but depicting the tower merely adds to just how weird an idea it is, plus the
clear blue sky is unthreatening and more akin to an Alpine skiing holiday
backdrop than the end of the world.

Tower of Destruction is not an easy book to formulate a
definitive opinion on either way. It has many good points (balance, pace,
imagination, originality, conceptual delivery, art) and is well-written, but
the combination of niggling discrepancies, over-emphasis on the Ice Palace
episode, insanely hard puzzles, and an over-arching illogicality, all make it
hard to see this as up there with KM’s best (#38 Vault of the Vampire and #52
Night Dragon). It certainly isn’t as dull as #51 Island of the Undead or a total trainwreck like #58 Revenge of the Vampire, it’s just
not slickly finished-off enough to be anything more than a slightly sub-standard
entry in the high-concept (and otherwise generally very good) 40s part of the
series. Don’t get me wrong, there are many FFs that are inferior to this and
this is still a decent and worthwhile book simply for the unique ideas it
includes, but it will probably leave you a little bit underwhelmed and very
confused. Give it a go if, like me, you are a fan of KM’s FFs and want to
experience all of his interesting creations but, if the vast improvement offered
by the 40s part of the series over the 30s part motivates you, then this book
might let you down.

2 comments:

Terry Oakes’ cover image is of an event that never comes (hopefully, otherwise you’ve lost) as it depicts the incomprehensible flying Black Tower concept fire-bombing a small village within a frozen environment.

That happens towards the end of the first paragraph of section 309. The clear blue sky in the picture is wrong, though: the text calls the sky 'ominously dark' and refers to 'clouds [...] boiling'.

Annoying though the clock puzzle is, it isn't absolutely necessary to solve it to win. And while familiarity with musical notation does help with the music puzzle, standard codebreaking skills can also do the trick, especially if you remember the name of the Elf you most need to find, which gives you about half the letters in the encrypted message straight off.

I don't agree that you can say with all certainty that the cover picture illustrates the section you quote. As you state "the text calls the sky 'ominously dark' and refers to 'clouds [...] boiling'" so this might not be the event you are referring to.

... and I'm not convinced that the average person has any "standard codebreaking skills". The fact is that the puzzles in KM's book are often very hard. Unless you worked at Bletchley Park in a past life?